THE PURPOSE OF GOD
S. D. K. Roberts
Ephesians 1: 3, 4; 2: 4–6; Exodus 15: 13, 16, 17;
Numbers 21: 4–9, 16, 17; Joshua 3: 11, 14–17
I want to speak about purpose. I wonder whether we all have a purpose. Things in the world just move along and people move with them. It is important for every one of us to have a purpose in life, but if our purpose relates merely to this life we shall be disappointed. The best purpose we can have is the purpose of God, and if we set ourselves to enter into that we shall not be disappointed. The expression “the heavenlies” is repeated in the passages read in Ephesians. The first reference relates to the purpose of God and the second to our entering into it. God’s thought for us all is that we should enter into it now and enjoy it. Ephesians takes us a little further than Colossians—to the heavenlies—and surely we would not want to depart out of this world without reaching God’s purpose—“Blessed ... with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ” and “made to sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus”.
Some might ask, How can I reach the heavenlies and enter consciously into God’s purpose for me as a matter of present enjoyment—to be “holy and blameless before him in love”? It is surely a wonderful objective, to be quickened together with the Christ and made to sit down in the heavenlies in Him.
You get a great view if you look down from the top, as in the Song of Songs 4: 8, “Come with me … Come, look from the top of Amanah”. To move
forward from the light of God’s purpose to my actually entering into it as a matter of present enjoyment involves a journey for the soul. However, this journey need not take a long time. I would like to illustrate it by Israel’s journey from Egypt into the land of Canaan. It is only a type because for us the end to be reached is not an earthly, but a heavenly, sphere. I survey the journey as from a height in order to be concise.
First there was the going out of Egypt. God’s thought in Exodus was to bring them out that He might bring them in. “Thou by thy mercy hast led forth the people that thou hadst redeemed ... Till the people pass over that thou hast purchased”, Exodus 15: 13, 16. The heavenlies are the other side of Jordan. The way we go is much the same as with Israel. The going out involved redemption; they were secured out of slavery. Then there was the going through the Red Sea, involving salvation; but when they came to going over the Jordan the need was deliverance.
In Numbers 21 the people realized for the first time that not only had they sinned but that they were sinful. They had been bitten by the serpents and unless there had been an intervention from God Himself they would have died. The burning poison was in them. But, in type, God showed them in the serpent of brass (it could read ‘copper’) how His judgment of sin had been fully borne, to His full satisfaction, in the sinless One, our Lord Jesus Christ, being made sin before God, bearing, and exhausting, the fire of God’s righteous judgment on sin from its very inception. Copper does not melt under extreme heat, and whilst Christ exhausted God’s judgment on sin, He was not exhausted by it. He did not die in exhaustion, He “uttered a loud cry” and expired (Mark 15: 37). He died in power. Having looked intently on that serpent of brass—
typically Christ made sin, made the very thing that had bitten them—they lived.
Next they move on and are given the springing well, typical of the Holy Spirit as witness within the believer of a risen and glorified. Christ. Water rises to its own level, and the Holy Spirit, as we make way for Him, will lead us up to the height from which He has come.
Israel now had power as they approached the crossing over Jordan and their eyes were fixed on “the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth” which went before them. The priests’
feet actually touched the water, for He tasted death. Consequent on the feet of the priests who bore the ark dipping in the edge of the water, the waters disappeared and the whole nation went over on dry ground. Their new ground was still on earth, but ours is “the heavenlies”.
We do not have to go through death literally, but as associated with Christ, the Ark of the covenant, we can plant our feet on our new ground. This is not only on the other side of death in resurrection, but where the Ark now is, in the very presence of God, the heavenlies.
How are we going to move on from light as to the purpose of God to the enjoyment of His purpose? We have a sense by the Spirit of God that we are “quickened … with the Christ”.
Quickening, in this scripture, means ‘living in the life of another’, and we are made to sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, holy and blameless before God in love—and there for ever! It is God’s delight that we should enter into this consciously in our spirits now and fully enjoy it as being God’s eternal purpose for us.
Substance of an address at Buckhurst Hill
13 February 1988